Post #613439 by Captain Grimes on Wed, Nov 9, 2011 7:24 PM

On 2008-11-25 15:28, Tattoo wrote:
The hardest part has been trying to figure out when the 7 Seas opened (and closed). The dateline I have come up looking at postcards and writings is

1936 - a post card that refers to a visit in 1936
1937 - Ray Haller postcard
1941 - Bob Brooks postcard
1981 - Wonderland Murder article in NY Times

So it's save to say the 7 Seas was open from at least 1936 through 1981. Another question I've had is the whole Ray Haller and Bob Brooks relation. If you ask me, they're the same person!

I've been doing a little research in the LA Times for a project, and came up with some possible answers.

The earliest mention of the 7 Seas that I can find is from The Times' Hollywood gossip column of December 26, 1935. Here's the full quote:

Recent visitors at Ray Hallor's Seven Seas Cafe included Alice Faye, Jean Harlow, Dorothy Lee, the Hugh Herberts, Betty Lawford, Eugene O'Brien, and the Ray Dodges.

Interestingly, they call the proprietor Hallor, not Haller. Ray Hallor was a fairly successful actor in the silent-film era, starring in pictures with Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Myrna Loy, and a few other big names. He was killed in a car accident on April 16, 1944. The Times' obituary refers to him as an "actor and night club figure." Here's the full quote:

Ray Hallor, 44, stage actor, silent film player, and well-known figure in Hollywood night life, was killed yesterday in a head-on auto collision between Palm Springs and Cathedral City. All five occupants of the car were seriously injured.

After a career on the stage when he appeared with such prominent stars as Maude Adams, Hallor went into motion pictures and played a number of roles in silent films. He was reported to have interests in several Hollywood nightclubs in recent years.

He leaves a sister, Mrs. Edith Hallor Dillon of Hollywood, widow of the film director, Jack Dillon.

A little more digging turned up some interesting stuff. A Times article from April 4, 1933, mentions that Ray Hallor escorted Jean Harlow (the same Jean Harlow who was spotted at the 7 Seas two years later) to a party at W.S. Van Dyke's house. Woody Van Dyke, of course, directed lots of pictures from the silent days through the 1940s, including "The Thin Man" series.

Another Times story -- this one from November 7, 1929 -- mentions that Hallor was arrested and fined $50 for liquor possession, having been caught, along with Mickey Walker, middleweight boxing champion, with a bottle of booze at the Hollywood apartment of an actress named Dorothy Davis.

Hallor was also named in a 1929 breach-of-promise-suit that a young woman brought against the actor Maurice Costello, a silent-film star who was apparently one of Hallor's friends, and, incidentally, the great-grandfather of Drew Barrymore.

In any case, I might be missing something, but it seems likely to me that (a) Ray Haller of 7 Seas fame was the same man as Ray Hallor the actor; and (b) Ray was not the same man as Bob Brooks, given that Ray died in 1944 and Bob was apparently still alive in the 1950s.

One last tidbit: in 1928, Ray Hallor starred in a movie called, appropriately enough, "Tropical Nights." Here's the tagline from IMDB:

Thrilling Battle with Death-Dealing Octopus--Guardian of Hidden Treasures of the Sea Jungle!

Sounds like a forgotten tiki classic.